Exhibiting Asante

• Asante
• exhibition
• restitution
• British Museum

In 1981, Asantehene Opoku Ware II opened the British Museum’s exhibition Asante, Kingdom of Gold. It later traveled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he again opened it. This article explains the genesis and aims of the exhibition and places it in the context of earlier Asante exhibitions. All, like the British Museum’s, were organized by white outsiders.

I became the British Museum’s Keeper of Ethnography in 1974. At the time, the Department of Ethnography was maintained in what was called the Museum of Mankind, located in Burlington Gardens in London. Shortly after starting, I received a letter from the Asantehene requesting the return of all the gold regalia removed from Kumase by British forces during the Anglo-Asante War of 1874. He had been prompted to do this by Ivor Wilks, an eminent historian of the Asante state, to mark the invasion’s hundredth anniversary. Regrettably, Wilks had not bothered to discover what the British Museum held and had no knowledge of the laws governing it. His advice was ill-informed and seriously flawed.

At least three earlier letters from the Asantehene had been ignored by William Fagg, my predecessor. The latest letter was even more pressing because the Ghana Government was now taking an interest. I met with Sir John Pope-Hennessy, the British Museum’s Director, and explained the situation. It was decided I should go to Kumase as soon as possible. I had previously lived in Ghana doing research on twentieth-century cults such as Abirewa and Hwemso.

I was received by the Asantehene with his usual courtesy. At a meeting with him, his akyeame (counselors), and senior chiefs, I explained that the British Museum Act of 1963 made it impossible to alienate items from the collection.¹ However, I emphasized that the Museum wished to avoid an impasse and wanted to explore ways to cooperate with the Golden Stool (i.e., the Asante nation). After detailed discussions, it was agreed that we would mount an exhibition on Asante and provide assistance if the Asantehene decided to create a museum, including training its staff.² The following year, the Asantehene visited the Museum of Mankind, saw the regalia, and decided there were six items that he especially wished to be returned. All our discussions took place with good will on both sides.

We began to plan the exhibition; it would be the latest of a long line of attempts to represent the Asante in the UK. One of the earliest exhibitions formed part of Liverpool’s 1886 International Fair. It contained what was described as a life-sized reproduction of the Palace at Kumase. A contemporary account mentions “the picturesque appearance presented by the Africans in connection with the Coomasie Palace while prosecuting their hammock-carrying duties through the grounds” (Beecham 1886, 16, 19).

In the 1890s, there was a more elaborate commercial presentation. An entrepreneur set up an inhabited Asante village, promoted as “The Greatest Ethnographic Show, The Ashanti Village.” It toured from place to place. It was claimed to involve a hundred men, women and children who lived in houses modeled on those of their homeland, constructed by “several native builders” using materials brought from there. These villagers, apparently Akan and Ga, drummed, danced, sang, carried their chief in a hammock, and sold items (pots, wood carvings, “battle swords,” gold jewelry etc.) they made. The souvenir program emphasized the inhabitants’ morality and their children’s eagerness to learn, but there was a strong racist element: the villagers “preserved in their character the childish gaiety and originality of a natural people” (New Brighton Tower Company n.d.). Both these shows grew out of the 1874 invasion. Extensive coverage in the media and several books about it had made the Asante famous. The Asante were a good box office draw: money could be made from them.

These shows demonstrated Europeans’ power to bring people from faraway places for public entertainment, a feature of interaction with indigenous peoples from the earliest contacts. The next major display of culture also involved living participants, but its approach was different. It was part of the vast British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924–1925 which was intended to show the extraordinary variety and actual or potential wealth of each country within the Empire (Figure 1). The Gold Coast pavilion had two parts. One showed aspects of life with relevant things displayed in front of painted scenes e.g., sacks of cocoa in front of a backdrop of women on a cocoa farm. The second part was organized by R. S. Rattray, a Gold Coast Assistant District Commissioner with training as anthropologist. He set up another Asante village housing six men and a woman. Their clay and thatched “huts“ were decorated in traditional low relief patterns; a Nyame dua (“God’s tree,” an altar of sorts) was installed and received regular offerings of eggs. The villagers drummed, danced, and sang for visitors, and made pots and carvings to sell. The carver was Kwaku Brempah, who sold his stools for a guinea each. The distinguished carver Osei Bonsu, about whom Doran Ross (1984) has written, was his son.

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Figure 1.

Postcard from the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley presenting, “Gold Coast Africans in the Native Village at Wembley.”

Rattray, as almost everywhere in his work, was determined to depict Asante as it was before colonial rule had altered it. Before leaving the Gold Coast for the UK, he commissioned almost 100 carvings depicting a paramount chief, his entourage, and typical members of Asante society. “I scoured the country for … old wood-carvers of repute, men who had no European education or training” (Rattray 1927, 274; Ghana National Archives, Files 2370, 2690). These carvings were displayed at Wembley.

There was an important difference between this village and the one that toured fairgrounds in the 1890s. Rattray had immense respect for the Asante and wished to convey their culture’s wealth and complexity. The villagers were presented sympathetically; they talked to visitors through a translator and charmed and impressed many. It is claimed 27 million people visited Wembley. If only one in twenty entered the Gold Coast pavilion, then well over a million saw this manifestation of Asante life, an astonishing figure. British manufacturers also spread knowledge of the Asante; thousands of small gold-painted cast stools bearing the words “Ashanti stool, Wembley 1924” were sold, as were pipe tampers in the form of an akua’ba (a sculpture representing a female).

In the decades after Wembley, a few Asante items were displayed in many museums, but with little attention to original context. The next major exhibition was the 1977–1978 The Arts of Ghana organized by Herbert Cole and Doran Ross. It drew on loans from over fifty sources and was accompanied by an important book with numerous illustrations and an informative text (Cole and Ross 1977). A crucial element of their approach was to show that the makers of Ghanaian material culture were creative, innovative, and adaptive. The old tendency to see African societies and their “art” as frozen in some strange ethnographic present had been destroyed. The exhibition’s beneficial effects continue.

In preparing the British Museum Asante exhibition, my concern was, as far as possible, to give visitors a comprehensive account of Asante life and history, to represent the Asante state and culture as something that had evolved over several centuries, and to suggest the economic bases for its development. Cole and Ross had already shown it was wrong to present Ghanaian material culture as static—I hoped to convey this in a more specific historical context.

There were three elements to the exhibition: displays of a large number and range of objects supported by labels and information panels; physical reconstructions; and historic photographs, often greatly enlarged (Figure 2). The exhibition began with a reconstruction of village houses, and it ended with a depiction of a chief seated under a state umbrella with his attendants (Figure 3). At each point, supporting items such as stools, gold weighing equipment, gold regalia, and counselor staffs were displayed in showcases. Gold weights, for example, allowed us to depict many elements of the Asante world while impressing visitors with Asante creativity. However, many immaterial aspects of Asante life—dance, music, wit, proverbs, song, and dance—could not be represented or were only mentioned briefly in information panels. Also, many recent developments could not be shown, and the tenor of the exhibition was largely to suggest pre-colonial Asante.

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Figure 2.

A display from the 1981 British Museum exhibition Asante, Kingdom of Gold showing a variety of akua’mma, all drawn from the BM’s collection.

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Figure 3.

A tableau from the 1981 British Museum exhibition Asante, Kingdom of Gold showing a chief sitting in state with his attendants. The idea of creating similar figures was copied at the Manhyia Palace Museum.

Any thematic exhibition requires a balance between what one wishes to communicate and the available material. Fortunately, the British Museum’s Asante collection is the largest and most comprehensive in the world. It dates from 1817, perhaps earlier. We had no need to borrow from other museums.³ The only loan was the Golden Axe from the Royal Collection Trust; it had been presented to Queen Victoria by Asantehene Mensah Bonsu in 1881.

The exhibition was supplemented by a book (McLeod 1981). This tried to place Asante material culture in both a historical and social context, exploring patterns of settlement and the role of Kumase. It contained large numbers of photographs dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Chapters were devoted to important elements of material culture such as stools, brass vessels, and wood carvings, and included an exploration of the roles of images in Asante life. On a recent visit to Ghana, I was saddened to find the book is still in demand and still being used; I had hoped that by now it would have been succeeded by something better.

Such exhibitions are a form of translation, with the museum serving as the translator. It is no mean task to attempt to provide an understanding of a culture, such as Asante, about which the museum audience knows little if anything. In curating Asante, Kingdom of Gold, I tried to produce something that members of the culture depicted could recognize as having a fair degree of accuracy. How far this was achieved was for the Asante to judge.

In London and New York, Asante and other Ghanaians visited the exhibition. Many seemed pleased that their culture and history were being represented at two major museums. Many senior Asante traveled from Ghana to see and judge the London exhibition. Often, as they reached the end of their journey through the displays, they poured libation—I kept a supply of gin ready.

Exhibitions have after-effects. Regrettably, some increase the commercial value of what is displayed. A New York dealer befriended some of those accompanying the Asantehene; later, considerable quantities of gold regalia left Asante. There were other unexpected effects. One of our technicians made a replica gold-covered counselor‘s staff for display in the reconstruction that showed a chief sitting in state. He used gold-colored aluminum foil. An Asante visitor learned of this; soon, staffs and umbrella tops using the material were being produced in Kumase, instead of gold foil. We used realistic life-sized figures to represent the chief and his attendants. When Otumfuo Opoku Ware II opened the Manhyia Palace Museum in 1995, it included similar effigies of past Asantehenes and the famous Queenmother, Yaa Asantewaa. The exhibition brought us unexpected donations: a very senior weaver presented the Museum with several superb kente cloths. The title, Asante, Kingdom of Gold, has also had its own afterlife, appearing in several other contexts. At the time of its creation, the exhibition was almost certainly the largest and most comprehensive ever mounted about one African group. Perhaps in years to come a better one, this time organized by Asante curators, will be created.